October 2007

October 31, 2007

I have always had this theory that the fall weather brings us back to our thoughts, back to the analytical, the feeling and the philosphical. The summer is so much about the dance and the play and the physical, it's all about the motion and the participation and the active, present tense verb.

The fall is more about the subjunctive, or is it the conditional, maybe the passive tense, my grammar identification is rusty, but the idea is there: The idea that as the planet cools, and we are slowing down - the mornings are arriving a little later, and the evenings disappearing a bit sooner - we are more tuned inward, tuned into our thoughts, and plans, our feelings.

I turned over some of the earth in my garden this weekend. Trimmed some of the plants back that have gone a bit dormant, cleaned up the brittle leaves, pruned back some flowering shrubs, you know, getting the garden ready for the winter rains. My grandmother used to call it, 'closing up the garden' and it brought me to thoughts about 'opening' up to working more in my studio: painting, drawing, creating, with my hands, and not as much with my computer.

My thoughts these days have drifted towards thinking about the difference and the same-ness of working for money, and working for ones growth as an artist, when one (in my case me) makes their living from their creative side/self. My work the last few years has been weighted more towards making the money than toward the growth or expansion of my experience as an artist/designer. Re-thinking is where my mind is these autumn days.

So where is the line, where do I step over and cross back, and weave my way through this life? How much of my work needs to be about paying my bills and how much about satisfying my own personal longings to create? Are the two paths mutually exclusive, or is there a fine and delicate balance? A balance that I have perhaps not been paying enough attention to? Sure, the bills need to be paid, but can I live my life with more space to work as an artist, and perhaps devote less time to working to pay the bills?

These are the questions that run through my head these days. They run through my head when washing the dishes, or working on a collection of small paintings, or walking in the early morning fog, drifting off to sleep listening to the first few rains of the season. I started out feeling that these questions needed to be resolved. Answered. Clarified. Soon. And as the weeks have passed deeper into this autumn I realise that these are questions I must remember to ask myself more often than when the weather turns chillly, and the leaves begin to fall and the fog is thick and damp on a wednesday morning.

These are some of the many questions of our lives, of my life, that are asked and answered again and again, with new and different answers, at the different crossroads of our lives, in various voices, and for a myriad of reasons and situations.

For now, I paint and ponder. For now, I open photoshop and design. Perhaps pull out some stones and glassbeads and make some earrings. I will manage my deadlines the best I can, and continue to sift through all the answers calling back and forth to me - kind of like voices echoing across a canyon, that's the way it sounds inside my head.

It's also kind of like the feeling of sticking my hand into the bowl of fortunes that sits on a pedestal inside the entryway at a friend's house, and wanting to pull out the best and most wonderful fortune that will make me feel all warm and happy. Any of the following would do: You are always welcome at any gathering.
Your home is a pleasant place from which you draw happiness.
Sing and rejoice, fortune is smiling on you.

And instead I pull out a fortune that speaks to me in a way that is at once deeply comforting and terribly frightening, and makes me feel that anything is possible in this world and that hopefully I will have the courage to step forward, again, one more time, and once more, and so on, into my own life: And just what would that fortune say? I don't quite know yet, but I am getting closer to hearing the words that go with some of the answers.

October 29, 2007

Turquoise and Brown make such a beautiful pair of colours. The cool richness of the turquoise and the warm depth of a brown to compliment. There are a few combinations - like this one - that just never lose their appeal for me. Pink and Brown. Gray and Purple. Lime and Mauve... to name a few.

This colour combo goes in and out of popularity in the the world, though I think the last few years it has been more IN than not. I am still seeing whole lines of stationery and paper goods in these beautiful colours, as well as accessories and art.

October 28, 2007

I decided it was an invitation to re-visit the topic of Orange when I saw the topic on Studio Friday this week.

I have spending a lot of time making friends with orange since my Orange post in the colour series that I have been working on. Orange and I have never been the best of friends, but we are growing on each other every day.

Orange is not prolific in my studio ... so it was a bit of a treasure hunt to find the orange "within".

I have continued to spend much more time communing with orange: To look at ONE colour, to study and observe it, to think about how to fold it in to my work, to my world, to my thinking about colour, it's a wonderful thing.

I would truly and strongly suggest to one and all: pick a colour you don't feel friendly with, and visit it often, contemplate and converse with it, tell each other stories, run your fingers through it's hair and perhaps even have a slow dance.

Orange can be a joyous thing, warm, brilliant and always up for some fun. My studio and I celebrate the orange (again).

October 23, 2007

More varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose against a background of many shades of turquoise and azure. -Cecile Beaton

Turquoise has always had a way with my heart... so shimmery, ethereal, and also, somehow remains so grounded and deep. Turquoise is the colour of one of my favourite stones, the mediterranean sea with the sun shining on it, a perfect spring sky, or a beautiful shining pool.

Turquoise is another colour that was named for a "Thing", in this case the stone. The word turquoise was first used around the 16th century from the French language either from the word for Turkish (Turquois) or dark-blue stone (pierre turquin). Turquoise is not found in Turkey but was traded at Turkish bazaars to Venetian merchants who brought it to Europe.

The last paragraph of Victoria Finlay's book Colour: A Natural History of the Palette says:

When I was two days from finishing the first draft of this book, a friend called from New York in great excitement. "There's a text message on CNN. They say someone's found the colour of the universe."... I grabbed my pen and wrote down that scientists at Johns Hopkins University had discovered the colour of the light in the universe. And that it was pale turquoise*. I had no idea what it meant, but it suggested that my journey was not over. And that there was a whole world - no, a whole universe - of colour stories still to find. -Victoria Finlay

*Johns Hopkins later changed their findings and made a second and slightly embarrassed announcement that the "colour of the universe" was not actually turquoise but beige, due to a computer bug.

Personally, I am going to stick with their first finding, and go with the belief that it is, indeed, Turquoise and not Beige that reflects the colour of the universe.

October 20, 2007

As complementaries go, I think yellow and violet may be the most difficult. There values are so different: violet believes in staying home with the children, and yellow, well, yellow just always wants to play.

Aside from their stay at home or not values, they both are very intense colours, and their values really are very different. It takes a lot of work to find/create a value balance that is harmonious with these two disparate colours.

Itten called yellow "bright knowledge" and violet "dark, emotional piety". He was always looking for a true expressive blend of colour, and his interpretations of the colours' meanings, I think, still rings true today.

Please visit the Yellow .:. Violet Mosaic to see details and the artists that created the art that was used to create this lovely block on yellow .:. violet.

October 18, 2007

I just added a big list of books that I use all the time that are all about colour. See, they are all down there to the right, in the side bar, and all are linked through to Amazon.

Some of my favourite go-to colour books:

2 books by Leslie Carbaga. These 2 books are an amazing resource for anyone who is designing, making art, or just loves colour. The first one breaks down colours by decades, and the other by country and region. There are palettes galore, and lots of interesting background as to how colours became popular. He is also an illustrator and font designer and has designed a ton of logos, some of which you are probably very familiar with.

If you are graphic or interior designer you are probably familiar with the Pantone system of colours. These 2 books by Leatrice Eiseman have a wealth of information about colour in fashion, design, history, and provide you with an unbelievable amount of colour palette choices that describe a "feeling". Looking for just the right colour group to illustrate "sentimental", she's got it for you. Visit the Pantone site if you have never been, there's tons of stuff to look at and read.

And then, I can't do without my art school texts:

Itten
and Gage:

and lastly, a much read, much marked up and much loved Colour: A Natural History of the Palette.
Victoria Finley has written a book which is part travelogue, part historical non-fiction, part memoir and part art history. I enjoy it everytime I pick it up, and learn something new and intriguing. Read some things about her work here and see her new book about jewels .

October 17, 2007

violetn1 a : any of a genus (Viola of the family Violaceae, the violet family of herbs or subshrubs with alternate stipulate leaves and bot aeria and cleistogamous* flowers; esp : one with smaller usu. solid-coloured flowers as distinguished from the usu. larger flowered violas and pansies b : any of several plants of gnera other than that of the violet compare DOGTOOTH VIOLET 2 : any of a group of colours of reddish blue hue, low lightness and medium saturation -Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

And since, in many people's minds, purple and violet are interchangeable:

purplen1 a : (1) TYRIAN PURPLE (2) any of vaarious colours that fall about midway between red and blue in hue b : (1) cloth dyed purple (2) a garment of such colour; esp: a purple robe worn as an emblem of rank or authority c : (1) a mollusk (as of the genus Purpura) yielding a purple dye and esp. the Tyrian purple of ancinet times (2) a pigment or dye that colours purple 2 a : imperial or regal rank or power b : high rank or station -Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

Purple is a glorious yet complex color, preferred by very creative and eccentric types. It is something of an enigma; both sensual and spiritual "a blend of the excitement and sexuality of red and the tranquility of blue" often conflicting forces which have to be handled with care and a certain sense of daring. -Communicating with Colour

Composed of equal proportions of red and blue, violet is the colour of temperance, clarity of mind, deliberate action, of balance between Heaven and Earth, senses and spirit, passion and reason, love and wisdom. -Penguin Dictionary of Symbols

Tyrian purple, educated Victorians knew, was made from shellfish found in the eastern Mediterranean. But which ones, and how they were processed, was not known in the mauve days of the 1850s. The old time dyers had disappeared with the storming of Constantinople in 1453 and they had not left any records of their secrets. Nor was anyone quite sure what their finished product looked like either. - Colour: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finley

A colour associated symbolically with red or violet, genuine purple, derived from porphura, a shellfish yielding purple dye, was reserved for the clothing of kings and priests due to its costliness; hence it was a symbol of power and honour, Later it was generally regarded â€“ especially among Romans â€“ as a sign of muxury and prosperity. -Herder Dictionary of Symbols

October 16, 2007

Violet or Purple, may be the other most controversial of colours, the other one being orange. In my informal, anecdotal colour study, these are the 2 colours about which I hear the strongest Loves and Hates.

I am slowly befriending orange, but purple has been a life long love. I know so many who wrinkle up their noses at the mention of purple, and then say, "but it's great for you to love it..."

Many of the colour books that I have read, alternate between the use of the word purple and violet, to talk about the same colour; colours that I have always felt to be very different. Personally, I have always seen a distinction between purple and violet. Purple leans toward the red, while violet nods toward blue.

I know this is not an official distinction, in fact, most colour wheels I look at show violet with a distinct red-dish touch, but in my own mind purple and violet they are very different colours.

Feelings about purple? Violet? And if you love orange, can you also love the purple?

Indigo has always felt like a mysterious colour to me. Not quite blue, not quite black, and somehow kind of green. In terms of colour theory and the colour wheel, indigo does not make a solo appearance. Though it is part of the colour spectrum, it is not a primary colour or secondary colour.

Interestingly, Indigo was named and defined by Isaac Newton when he divided up the optical spectrum. He named seven colors primarily to match the seven notes of a western major scale, because he believed sound and light were physically similar, but also to link colors with the (then known) planets, days of the week, all things with seven items.

Humans do not tend to recognize indigo as a separate hue category between blue and violet. For this reason, some commentators, including Isaac Asimov, have suggested that indigo should not be regarded as a color in its own right but merely as a shade of blue or violet. -Wikipedia

"Indigo" is a word like "ultramarine" – it refers to where the colour historically comes from, rather than what the substance actually is. So, just as ultramarine is a translation of the Italian for "from beyond the seas," indigo is derived from the Greek term meaning "from India." - Colour: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finley

A fugitive, medium to dark blue originally obtained from the woad plant but largely replaced by Asian Indigo, also called Indian Blue, which has roughly thirty times the amount of the actual dyeing substance indicum. Until the discovery of an analine blue dye in 1896, indigo was the only blue dye available for wide use. Synthetic indigo, which fades as easily as the natural version, is now used for blue jeans. -Living Colours

The magic of indigo is that the blue colour only appears after the object being dyed (whether it is a textile or an arm - as in Celtic warriors) is taken out of the pot, and meets the air again. - Colour: A Natural History of the Palette

Indigo, a deeper blue, symbolizes a mystical borderland of wisdom, self-mastery, and spiritual realization. While blue is the color of communication with others, indigo turns the blue inward to increase personal thought, profound insights, and instant understandings. -Sensational Colour